Landing Party: A Dinosaur Thriller by Rick Chesler Read Free Book Online Page A

dipped the paddle and angled the raft toward the left fork. The ceiling became lower as they entered the new tributary, and also more fractured. Veins of molten lava shimmered here and there behind the cave walls. Small offshoots led off to the right and left, a labyrinthine complex of magma chambers and lava tubes. Anita led them into one of these small side-chambers.
    “Doesn’t look like it leads anywhere,” she said after paddling inside for some distance. “We should go back out to the main chamber.” As she turned the raft around, Skylar played her light on the low ceiling, which she noted had a different composition than the jagged lava walls. While the other three women talked about which way they should turn the boat once they emerged from this chamber, Skylar took out a small rock hammer from her pack. As the raft passed beneath a particularly low-hanging section of ceiling that forced her to duck from her sitting position on one of the pontoons, she chipped away at a shiny inclusion. The others were laughing now about something, and none of them turned to see what she was hammering away at.
    Just as the boat passed beneath the low section, the chunk of shiny rock fell into Skylar’s left hand. Her headlamp reflected brilliantly from the specimen, which was breathtaking in its clarity, luminescence, lack of impurities, and most of all—its size. Skylar sucked in her breath as the realization of what she held in her hands hit her hard.
    A diamond.
    By far, the largest diamond specimen she’d ever encountered in both her professional—and personal—life. It was still raw, unprocessed ore and not a polished jewel, but still, the thing was damn near the size of a football! She looked up at the ceiling again, and even the upper walls of the cavern. Sparkles everywhere. Thick veins of the clear gemstone ran throughout the cave walls. A surge of adrenaline spiked through her body as she realized that this entire volcanic cave system was practically made of diamonds.
    I was right! My research is confirmed.
    But diamonds, of course, were not supposed to be her concern. She was here as a professional scientist, not a gem collector. But…wow! The diamond ore in this chamber alone would probably be enough to lower the worldwide asking price of diamonds were it allowed to flood the market all at once. Imagine, Skylar thought, rendering diamonds worth less than cubic zirconium, or even quartz! Not that she had the resources or ability on this little sortie to collect them all. That would require a full-fledged mining operation. No wonder the Pacific Island nations were fighting over this place so much, she thought. Perhaps they knew? She was aware that many times local people had knowledge of their environment that was not represented in the scientific corpus.
    Then Anita was calling her name, asking her if they should go back and take the next right-hand fork along the main chamber. Skylar hurriedly dropped the huge hunk of diamond into her backpack. “Yes, yes. Let’s check out that right fork.”
    “What are all those glittering stones?” Joystna asked on the way out.
    They all looked to the geologist, who carefully dropped her pack to the bottom of the raft. “They’re just mica deposits. They sure do look pretty, but they’re not worth much at all.”
     
     

 
     
     
    Chapter 8
     
    Ethan moved to the Tongan, believing the boulder was now rocking in place and about to fall back onto the imprisoned castaway. “It’s moving. Pull him out of there before it falls back on him! Where were you, anyway, Richard?” The others bore confused looks as they stared at the wobbling rock.
    “Sorry, had to take a leak. When you gotta go, you gotta go. So is this an earthquake? Is the island destabilizing?” Richard speculated. But nothing else around them was moving. And then, before anyone could answer, the giant rock transformed in the most unexpected, most brutal of ways.
    An animal burst forth from the inside